The Return of the Emperor

by Chris Bunch

  Its admiral—until recently the fleet's vice-admiral—was one Gregor. He had replaced his CO, Mason, when Mason refused to follow the privy council's orders and requested relief.

  Oddly enough, both the relieved and reliever had crossed Sten's orbit. Mason had been Sten's brutal nemesis during flight school and a particularly lethal destroyer commander in the Tahn wars. He was a man without pity or bowels for his own sailors or the enemy, but he was one of the best leaders the Empire had.

  Gregor, on the other hand, had begun his military career as a failure. He had been in Sten's Imperial Guards’ Basic Company and had been washed out for slavishly ordering, as trainee company commander, a by-the-book attack that was obvious suicide. He had returned to the tourist world where his father was a muckety—not as much of one as Gregor bragged, but still one with clout. The old man had sighed, put another tick mark in Gregor's failure list, and put him to work in an area where he could screw nothing up. Gregor's father was an optimist. By the time the Tahn wars began, Gregor wanted out—out of the division he had bankrupted, out of the relationship he had ruined, and away.

  The Empire took almost anyone in wartime. They took Gregor—and commissioned him. This time Gregor discovered the path to success: Think about your orders first. If they aren't obvious booby traps, follow them slavishly. Develop a reputation for being hard. No one, during time of war, will be that curious about things like prisoner policy or retaliation. Gregor got promoted.

  He decided that Imperial Service—particularly with the political connections he had been careful to make—was his forte. Particularly with the AM2 shortage. Tourist worlds without tourists were not, to him, the pattern of the future.

  He had arrived with his reputation in front of him.

  Mason, a real hard man, had taken two weeks to decide that Gregor was not only an incompetent but someone destined to preside over a future version of Cone's's obliteration of the Aztecs.

  He was correct. Unfortunately, Mason ran out of time.

  The privy council had looked carefully for exactly the right admiral to head the attack on the Honjo system. In a way, they chose correctly. Mason would have followed orders and used just enough surgical force to convince the Honjo they were outgunned and outnumbered.

  But they went too far. The Kraa twins had decided that, in addition to their other talents, they had a freshly discovered talent for military tactics. Their concept of “good tactics” was as subtle as the way they handled labor disputes in the mines.

  Mason asked to be relieved. He was. Disgusted, he decided to disappear for a long vacation, helping some retired friends restore old combat spacecraft for a museum. It saved his life.

  Seconds after the change in orders from the privy council, Gregor ordered the 23rd Fleet into action. His fleet still looked impressive, even though some of the weapons systems were off-line, waiting for replacement parts that would never arrive; the ships themselves were at seventy percent or less of full complement, and the command “Full emergency power” from any power-plant engineer would have been regarded as an order for “Full public sodomy."

  Peace had struck hard at the Imperial Military, especially in personnel. The privy council had offered nothing but encouragement to anyone who wanted to leave the service. Many did. There was still a scattering of the dedicated in the fleet. And hard times on civvy street had provided other qualified sailors. But more than not, the 23rd's personnel were what should be expected: those who fell, dropped, or were pushed out of civilian life.

  Still worse, most of them knew themselves to be marginal. Pay was sporadic, punishments arbitrary, and privileges awarded and withdrawn haphazardly. Morale was just a word in the dictionary between mildew and mud.

  Ten worlds were chosen for the first attack—as an “example in frightfulness.” Two were the AM2 “warehouse” worlds. The other eight were system capitals. For both targets, the weapons and their deployment were the same.

  Neutron bombs were carpet-sewn across city centers and the warehouse worlds’ control areas. Instantly, no life—and the blasts did not set off any of the stored AM2. Neither Gregor nor the privy council had thought warnings or declarations necessary preludes to war.

  Gregor then made a broadbeam cast for the Honjo to surrender. First mistake: he had vaporized all the Honjo leaders who had the power to negotiate with the Empire. Second mistake: he had scared the Honjo into, he thought at first, paralysis.

  Berserker rage can sometimes, on initiation, be mistaken for terror.

  Gregor's fleet took up parking orbits and set patrols around the AM2 worlds. Then they brought in the slaved transports that would make up the “spacetrain."

  The council had underestimated the supply. The convoy would be at least twenty kilometers from leadship to drag.

  And the nightmare began as the Honjo exploded.

  There seemed to be no leaders, nor generals. Just—resistance. The workers imported to load the AM2 were as likely to club a guard down and smile in the dying as work. They sabotaged any crane or beltway they got near. Robot systems and computers were crashed.

  Gregor tried hostages, reprisals.

  None of it seemed to matter to the Honjo.

  The Emperor might have been able to tell the privy council that. The Honjo were hardheaded traders, and before they had learned that a contract was sharper than a sword, they had been excessively fond of sharp objects and private settlements of disputes.

  The Honjo slave laborers—those who survived—were returned to their home worlds. Fleet sailors were on-planeted and used for the work force. The situation got worse.

  Small strike forces—squads, platoons, companies, irregulars—were landed. A one-sided guerrilla war began. Imperial soldiers and sailors could not open fire in the maze of buildings, each building a monstrous bomb. The Honjo had no such compunctions.

  The fleet itself was attacked by such patrolcraft as the Honjo had, those light, boxy transports with three brave men or women at the controls and a bomb in the cargo hold. Kamikaze—the divine wind—worked.

  It seemed as if the entire Honjo culture had held its breath for a moment and then heard, whispering from the dim past, a war leader's words: “You can always take one with you..."

  It was a siege, but not a siege. The besiegers arrived—and died. A battle, but not a battle. A perpetual series of alley murders. There seemed to be no way of stopping them. Put out destroyer screens to shield the big boys? Fine. The Honjo would attack the destroyers. Even a spaceyacht with a cabin full of explosives was enough to take a destroyer out of combat. Three ... or six ... or ten such spitkits ... and then survivors went on for the battlewagons.

  Gregor bleated for reinforcements. There were none that could be sent.

  There were ships—and men—standing by on the depot world of Al-Sufi. All they needed was fuel. Once fueled, they could support Gregor. But Gregor had the fuel...

  Men—and ships—died.

  Gregor knew better than to abort. The fleet must return with the AM2.

  Gregor's officers and long-termers started hearing rumors then. Rumors from the Empire itself. Something was happening. People—leaders—they knew were being relieved and brought to trial. There were whispers of executions. All the deck sailors of the 23rd could do was work in a frenzy and pray that the final cargoes would be loaded before they all died. No one was willing to give odds, either way...

  * * * *

  Mavis Sims did not expect a reward for betraying her fellow officers as part of her sworn duty to the Empire.

  At best, she knew that her career would be over and her friends would send her to Coventry.

  It was worse.

  She should have known better. Regicide, even attempted regicide, has its own laws from investigation to punishment, laws limited only by whatever humanity the king chose to allow. Robert Francois Damiens, tortured and torn into four parts by horses, could have shown her that. The Eternal Emperor himself had paid little attention to the statutes in his clea
nup after the Hakone plot failed. And the privy councilors were far less saint-like than the Eternal Emperor—or that declining monarch Louis XV either, for that matter.

  When Sims had decided she must expose Mahoney's conspiracy she alerted the highest-ranking Intelligence officer she knew and told him of the assassination plan, when and where. No more.

  What would happen next ... she would not think.

  What did happen was that Sims was arrested and her mind systematically ripped apart on the brainscan. The expert “interrogators” had no interest in Sims's survival, either as an alert human or as a brainburn.

  Yes ... ten other officers at the table. Record faces. Does Sims know their names? Record them. Next meeting. Yes. Here. The amphitheater. Single-vision for this. Who is speaking?

  One of the interrogators knew. “Clottin’ Mahoney! But he's dead!"

  Continue scan ... we'll report as necessary. Now. A party. Dammit ... that group in the corner never looked at her. Never mind. They're most likely duped elsewhere.

  "Dammit-to-hell! There's Mahoney again."

  "Who's that smaller guy in mufti beside him?"

  "Dunno. Look. He's talking—and Mahoney's listening."

  "Do we have an audio?"

  "Negative. Sims was just passing that room when somebody came out and shut the door behind them."

  "Get a make on the little one. Anybody your Mahoney shuts up and listens to is somebody the council's gonna want bad."

  When it was over, nearly eight hundred of the nearly one thousand conspirators and their aides present for the kriegsspiel had been positively identified. Among them—Mahoney and Sten.

  And when it was over, Sims's body was cremated. Her fiche vanished from Imperial records. Five generations of Imperial service ended—in night and fog.

  * * * *

  That was the cover name for the roundup operation: Nightfog. Target lists were made and sent out. They were to be implemented not only by Mercury and Mantis operatives, but by the council's private armies as well.

  Some of the conspirators were arrested and tried publicly. Some of them, prodded by threats to their families, or more often just drug-programmed, confessed that the Honjo had indeed organized the conspiracy, through an outlaw general named Mahoney. Then they were permitted to die.

  Others just vanished.

  Innocent or guilty, the Imperial Officer Corps was shattered—shattered in self-image, shattered in fear, shattered in paranoia. All of them knew that Nightfog II ... or III ... or ... could happen.

  There were eight hundred names from Sims's brain-scan, and eight hundred names on the original list.

  Later estimates varied, but at least seven thousand beings were killed.

  People had personal enemies. Each of the privy councilors, except Kyes, cleared up some of their own problems as the list was passed around—and as it grew.

  When the deathlists arrived on the desks of the Security people chosen to make the pickups, it was simple for the officer or thug in charge to make an addition. Or two. Or six.

  There were, of course, mistakes.

  A writer of children's fiche named White, much loved and respected, was unfortunate to live in the same suburb as a retired major general named Whytte. The writer's house was broken into in the middle of the night. The writer was dragged to the center of his living room and shot. The writer's wife tried to stop the killers. She was shot, as well.

  When the mistake was revealed, the head of the murder unit, a Mercury Corps operative named Clein, thought the matter an excellent joke.

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALEX SAW THE beast raise its head from the trencher of meat and fix bloodshot eyes on Sten. The huge brows beetled into a murderous frown. The being wiped the gore from its lips with the long brush-tail beard and grimaced at some foul thought, exposing thick, yellow teeth.

  The creature lumbered to its feet, harness creaking under the weight of many weapons. It came forward three steps, knobbed, hairy paws brushing briefly on the floor. It was a meter wide from the neck down and weighed in at a fearful 130 kilograms. Although only 150 centimeters high, it was massive power in a smallish package. Muscle cells were easily as dense as Kilgour's, despite his heavy-worlder's genes. Its spine was curved, and its great trunk was supported on legs like bowed tree trunks.

  The being raised itself to its full height, brandishing an enormous stregghorn. His shout filled the big hall like a large explosion in a small cylinder at depth.

  "By my mother's beard!” it bellowed at Sten. “This is unbearable."

  The being waddled to the table and loomed over Sten. Drunken tears welled out of the gaping holes the Bhor called eyes. Blubbering like a hairy infant, Otho collapsed next to Sten, his breath laced with enough stregg to peel the hide off a deep-space freighter.

  "I love you like a brother,” Otho wept.

  The Bhor chieftain turned to his feasting subjects. He gestured with his stregghorn, spilling a pool that could drown a small human.

  "We all love you like a brother!” he roared. “Tell him, brothers and sisters. Are we not Bhor? Do we hide honest feelings?"

  "No!” came the shout from the more than a hundred assembled warriors.

  "Swear it, brothers and sisters.” Otho shouted the order. “By our fathers’ frozen buttocks—we love you Sten!"

  "By our fathers’ frozen buttocks...” came the return shout, amplified by a more than a hundred Bhor maws. Otho flung himself on Sten and sobbed.

  Alex shuddered. He did not envy his friend's popularity with these beings.

  Across the great hall there were a few human warriors sprinkled among the Bhor. Of all the admiring eyes watching Sten—the returning hero—one pair viewed him with special interest. Her name was Cind. She was very, very young and very, very lovely. It was that special kind of beauty that grabbed at the heart through the loins. Cind was also one of the most highly regarded practitioners of that supremely lethal art—sniping.

  Her own personal weapon had started life as an already-exotic Imperial-issue sniper weapon. It fired the normal Imperial AM2-charged, Imperium-shielded round, but instead of using a laser as propellant it used a linear accelerator. A variable power automatic-estimate scope gave the range to target. The scope could then be adjusted laterally on its mount—in the event the nominated target was sheltered behind something. It was a weapon that could shoot around corners. The rifle was never offered on the open market, not even to Imperially equipped allies. Cind had acquired hers on the black market and then further modified it for her own tastes—thumbhole stock built for her, increased barrel weight for better balance and less “recoil” flip, double-set trigger, bipod, and so forth. As issued, the rifle was heavy. Cind's modifications made it still heavier. But despite her slender form, she could lug it hour after hour over the hilliest terrain with little effort. So much for the alleged inability of female humans to possess upper body strength without hormone implants.

  The problem with the rifle was that its ammunition, like every other form of AM2, was currently very scarce. So Cind had trained on every other weapon she could find that could reach out and tweep someone long distance, from crossbows to projectile weapons.

  Like most of the Bhor warriors she was cross-trained in all fighting skills. On a ship, for instance, she was a boarding specialist and had proved herself on several hairy engagements.

  The young woman was a Jann, or perhaps more correctly an ex-Jann. The Jann had been a suicidally dedicated military order, the striking arm for the Talamein theocracy that had once ruled the Lupus Cluster with genocidal hands. The Wolf Worlds, as the systems now controlled by the Bhor were dubbed, had long been a minor thorn in the Eternal Emperor's side. It was minor only because the cluster was on the outskirts of the Empire. It was not so minor in the view of the Bhor. The warrior trading culture was quickly being killed off by the xenophobic Jann. They had become very nearly extinct.

  But many years before Cind
was born, an important discovery was made well beyond even the Wolf Worlds. It was new deposits of Imperium X, the substance used to shield, and therefore control, AM2. The people of Talamein and the killer Jannissars, however, lay at the crossroads where the shipments of Imperium X had to pass. Flailed on by their homicidal religion—the worship of Talamein—the Jann became a cork in an extremely important bottle.

  Sten and Alex had headed a Mantis team sent in to pull the cork. In the bloody sorting out that followed, Sten eventually had taken advantage of a deep gulf in Talameic theo-politics, placing two competing pontiffs in bloody competition with one another. They both died.

  To Sten's dismay, the immediate result produced a third religious leader, as powerful as he was traitorous. He was also a handsome hero—the proverbial “Man On A Horse"—that attracted the fanatics even more than his passion for Talamein. But suddenly that final leader decided he was Talamein himself, denounced his own faith as being sinfully misguided, called for peace, and then suicided. It was a lucky turn. Luck, in that case, was provided by a brutal assault on the prophet's stronghold, followed by Sten's carefully thought-out hand-to-hand reasoning with the man and an injection of a hypnotic into his veins, followed by the Programming, The Speech, and The Self-Martyrdom.

  With the reluctant blessings of the Eternal Emperor, Otho and his Bhor subjects were raised up as the new rulers of the Wolf Worlds.

  Most historians agreed that thus far it had worked out fairly well. The Bhor tended to let other beings think and do as they please, so long as they did not interfere with the operations of the Lupus Cluster, or trigger new quarrels.

  Oddly, the Faith of Talamein collapsed along with its power. Despite ancient roots, it had become so repressive that the surviving believers were delighted that their noses were no longer pressed against the rough stone wheel of Talamein. It helped that the sight of the two competing pontiffs had become so ridiculous that even peasants tilling distant soil had become embarrassed.

  The Jannissars themselves became crusaders without a cross, ultimate Ronin. They found other, peaceful lives but remained both ashamed and proud of their heritage.